Quote:“I have learned that success is to be measured – not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.”

Born to a slave on April 5, 1856, Booker Taliaferro Washington’s life had little promise early on. In Franklin County, Virginia, as in most states prior to the Civil War, the child of a slave became a slave. Booker’s mother, Jane, worked as a cook for plantation owner James Burroughs. His father was an unknown white man, most likely from a nearby plantation. Booker and his mother lived in a one-room log cabin with a large fireplace, which also served as the plantation’s kitchen.

At an early age, Booker went to work carrying sacks of grain to the plantation’s mill. Toting 100-pound sacks was hard work for a small boy, and he was…